“I’m not here to hurt you,” I said, and she looked up at me, brow wrinkled.

“I . . . I tried to kill you,” she said, and I eased my grip on her arms just the littlest bit.

“I know this is hard to believe, but I’m not here for revenge or anything,” I answered, trying to keep my voice calm. But it was all too easy to remember that this girl had come really close to killing me. To hurting Bee.

I could swear my scalp still stung from where she’d grabbed my hair, and I gritted my teeth, reminding myself yet again not to hold her too hard.

“I just have a few questions, and I’d really like them answered,” I said, and from behind me, Blythe suggested, “We could tie her up?”

Annie started to struggle again at that, and I shot Blythe a glare. “Not. Helpful.”

Turning back to Annie, I lifted one hand from her arm, holding my palm out flat. “If I let you up, do you promise not to freak out?”

Annie’s blue eyes shot to Blythe again, but after a second, she nodded, and I slowly eased back.

“My mom went to get lunch,” Annie said, wiping her nose with the back of her hand as she sat up. “She’ll be back really soon.”

“And we’ll be gone before that,” I promised her. “I just need to know about what happened the other night.”

What had happened, turned out, was something like I’d thought. David had come in the shop, seeming confused and lost. He’d been wearing sunglasses, Annie told us, but he took those off, and then . . .

“Light,” she said now, leaning against the wall of the storage room. “Like, this golden, overwhelming light, and after that . . .” Trailing off, she shook her head. “It’s all kind of fuzzy. I remember seeing your face in my mind.” She nodded at me. “And suddenly, I knew all these words. Paladin, Oracle . . . I knew all these things . . .” Her gaze got a little hazy, and she lifted one hand to her mouth, chewing at her fingernails. “It was the weirdest thing. One minute, I was here, everything the same as it’s always been. The next, it’s like I was on this quest, and nothing made sense but everything made sense?”

I thought of how I’d felt that first night, fighting Dr. DuPont in the bathroom. It had been like that. Like I’d just been plucked out of one life, and dropped into another, but somehow knew exactly what to do.

So I nodded and Annie continued. “I remember getting in my car. I have these flashes of fighting with you, of feeling like I had to fight you.”

None of that was surprising, so I just filed it all away to process later. David had made her and he’d sent her after me on purpose. It’s not like I hadn’t thought that was probably the case, but there was a huge difference between suspecting something and knowing it flat out.

“But you stopped,” I said to her, crossing my arms over my chest. “That’s not usually the deal.”

“He made me stop,” she said simply, and my heart thudded hard in my chest.

“What?”

Sighing, Annie straightened up from the wall. “It was like I heard his voice in my head, and he was screaming at me to stop.”

Her eyes met mine. “The Oracle,” she clarified. “Or . . . I don’t know, it sounds weird—”

“Everything sounds weird with this,” Bee reminded her. She was standing near the door, occasionally casting one eye back toward the shop, but no one had come in yet. Of course, when I glanced at the clock, I realized we’d been here less than fifteen minutes.

Annie gave a little laugh and took a deep breath. “True,” she acknowledged with a nod. “Okay, in that case . . . the Oracle sent me after you.” She looked at me again, her eyes meeting mine. “The Oracle wanted me to kill you.”

I swallowed hard. “Right.”

“But the person he is—whoever he is besides that whole Oracle part? That’s the voice I heard in my head, I think. It’s like . . . it’s like he’s two people, I think. The Oracle who wants to kill you, and the regular guy who wants you to be okay.”

It was small comfort, really, but it was something. It meant that David was still in there, was still fighting the Oracle half of himself.

Blowing out a long breath, I nodded. “Thank you, Annie,” I said, “Really. Only a few hard feelings about you trying to scalp me.”

We’d gotten the answers we came for, and I could hear the beep of the alarm system as someone—Annie’s mom, no doubt—opened the back door, calling out, “Annie?”

Blythe and Bee were already heading out into the main part of the boutique, and I turned to follow them, but before I could, Annie caught my arm.

Turning back, I raised my eyebrows and she added, “Part of him loves you.” She tightened her grip. “But trust me—the part that wants you dead is stronger.”

Chapter 15

ONCE UPON A TIME, I had been SGA president and head cheerleader. I’d been a Homecoming Queen and a beauty contestant.

Safe to say, I hadn’t expected to spend any night in a no-tell motel in Mississippi, yet that was exactly where I found myself.

“Oh God, Harper, no,” Bee said from the passenger seat, but Blythe leaned forward, squinting at the neon sign. “This’ll do,” she said, and I looked at Bee with an apologetic shrug.

“It’s cheap,” I reminded her as I applied a fresh layer of rose balm to my lips. “And just for one night. Plus if anyone is looking for us, who would look here?”

Bee grimaced, ducking her head to look through the windshield at the long rectangle of aqua-and-cream brick stretching out in front of us. “It’s actually a relief to think that no one would ever look for us here,” she admitted, and I cracked a smile.

“Our reputations are safe,” I said, and Bee rolled her eyes, but opened her door.

We’d headed north after our stop in Piedmont, and all of us were tired and lost in our own thoughts. I think Blythe was still put out that I hadn’t told her about going to Piedmont in the first place, and I kept mulling over what Annie had told me. It may be good to know part of David was still there, but I believed her about the Oracle part being stronger.

Believed her, and had no idea what to do about it.

The sun was already beginning to set as we opened the door labeled “of ice.” The girl behind the desk was about our age, with mousy brown hair that hung just past her collarbone. She was reading a romance novel with “Billionaire” in the title, one that Mrs. Morrison back at Hensley Manor would no doubt approve of.

Ryan’s magical balm had worked with my parents, but then we’d used magic on them before.

Affecting the most mature expression I could manage, I leaned nonchalantly on the counter. “We need a room?”

The girl—her name tag read “Shelley” in white letters—didn’t even look up from her book. “Fifty dollars for a double,” she said in a bored voice, and when I pulled my wallet out of my bag, she fished out a form, sliding it over to me.

I signed the piece of paper that promised I wasn’t going to trash the place, and as I did, I could feel the weight of Shelley’s gaze on me. I lifted my head, meeting her eyes, but as soon as I did, she ducked her gaze back down to her book, one finger twirling her hair.